Arts & Events

A team of Bay Area filmmakers has produced a gripping animated tale of human courage and loss that has garnered a great deal of praise—including awards at 15 international film festivals and an Oscar nomination (Best Documentary Short) from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Last Day of Freedom is a 31-minute animated collaboration by British-born UC Santa Cruz art professor Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, a freelance editor and animator born in Israel.

Last Day of Freedom offers an unusual and visually arresting film experience. Using the simplest of pen lines (covering more than 32,000 hand-drawn frames) the filmmakers sketch their story with faultless economy and surprising depth.

Anyone who is a fan of the Moth Radio Hour and National Public Radio's StoryCorps will relish this film.

A team of Bay Area filmmakers has produced a gripping animated tale of human courage and loss that has garnered a great deal of praise—including awards at 15 international film festivals and an Oscar nomination (Best Documentary Short) from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Last Day of Freedom is a 31-minute animated collaboration by British-born UC Santa Cruz art professor Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, a freelance editor and animator born in Israel.

Set in the Bay Area, Last Day of Freedom uses simple line art and a single voice to recount the true-life story of a young man whose childhood is handicapped by race and further compromised by a traffic accident and resulting learning disabilities. Against all odds, he struggles to come to grips with life through two failed marriages, a tour of duty as a Marine fighting in Vietnam, and winds up hobbled by the social estrangement that frequently dogs a returning combat vet.

Last Day of Freedom offers an unusual and visually arresting film experience. Using the simplest of pen lines (covering more than 32,000 hand-drawn frames) the filmmakers sketch their story with faultless economy and surprising depth.

Anyone who is a fan of the Moth Radio Hour and National Public Radio's StoryCorps will relish this film.

At its core is an emotionally open 35-minute taped conversation with Bill Babbitt who tells the story of his little brother, Manny—an innocent child who grew up to become a US Marine and a combat hero, only to stumble into homelessness as a result of physical injuries and the unseen wounds in his head.

Bill clearly still feels a great love for his younger brother but also has to deal with his responsibility for actions that eventually lead to his Manny's arrest and death.

The tragedy peaks late one Bay Area night, as Manny wanders through the dark streets, spooked by the bomb-like sounds of backfiring autos. Mistaking the lights of cars rolling down the hilly streets for helicopters descending from the sky, a flashback of paranoia pushes him into panic-mode and leads him to commit a terrible crime.

Between tears, Bill confesses how even he came to fear his little brother and finally was forced to steer him into the arms of the police. Bill believed the police when they told him that Manny would not be hurt; that he would be given medical and emotional care. That didn't happen.

When it came to a trial, Manny's war record, his symptoms of PTSD, and the shrapnel wounds in his skull were supposed to assure that he would escape a death sentence and, instead, be confined to a mental hospital. That's not how it turned out.

In 1999, Manny was executed in San Quentin, under the orders of Governor Gray Davis.

While society failed Manny at many levels, the Pentagon, at least, gave him some respect in his last hours. Washington belatedly awarded Manny with a Purple Heart and a Marine Honor Guard was deployed to present the medal to the prisoner, as he stood bound and chained, inside Death Row.

When the Marines crisply saluted, Bill recalls, Manny struggled desperately to return the salute. "But he couldn't. His hands were shackled to a chain around his waist."

The film is now also available on Netflix in streaming digital format.

ROXIE SCREENINGS

Best Documentary Shorts Part A—2:30 PM:

Body Team 12, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Last Day of Freedom